What is a fact about a leaf cutter ants behavior?

Answer 1

Leafcutter ants:

* are true ants, not termites (which many people wrongly call "white ants"

* are any of about fifty different species of ants found mainly in South and Central America

* have more species of castes than almost any other ants; apart from the reproductives (queens and males) there are the major workers(or "soldiers"), the medium-sized workers that do most of the hard work, the minor workers that ride on the medium sized workers and protect them from killer Phorid flies that lay eggs on the medium workers (their babies eat the ants' grains from inside). And the minor workers do a lot of the fighting if necessary, and there are the really tiny workers that tend the larvae and mind the fungus gardens

* collect green leaves from surrounding plants in such quantities that they can strip orchards and large areas of jungle, which can mean that the ants are serious pests

* have special jaws for cutting leaves neatly like scissors; they cut out round pieces of leaf and walk off with them, holding them above their heads like umbrellas for easy carrying (nothing to do with rain or sun)

* don't eat the leaves, but in the nests the least workers chew them up and store them in mounds like compost heaps and grow fungus on them. The ants eat the fungus.

* only use very special fungus in their fungus gardens. They do however also grow special bacteria that control the enemies of their fungus, just as human farmers spray pests on their crops.